A hippie’s guide to retirement planning
By Arley Hoskin
You know you're married when you spend your Saturday night discussing how much you should contribute to your 401K instead of what bars have the best beer on tap. (For the record, Logan and I prefer the Flying Saucer, The Foundry and Harbor Lights.)
When it comes to retirement, I keep reminding myself that we need to save, save, save so that we can live out our dream of driving across the country in a Volkswagen bus.
So, after Logan signed up for his 401K contributions he took the next logical step in retirement planning and looked for Volkswagen buses on Craigslist. I mean, if we are going to plan for retirement, shouldn’t it involve more than just contributions to a mutual fund?
Fortunately for us, we found just the bus we were looking for from guy in Wichita who was apparently desperate for rent money. (Side note: if you are looking for anything, anything at all, check out Craigslist the last week of the month.)
Logan and I made the trip to Wichita on Sunday to check out the bus. We haven’t taken a vacation this summer and to be honest it was nice to hit the road and get out of town, even if the destination was just Wichita. When trips with your spouse to Wichita and Salina are fun, you know you’ve married the right person.
We decided to go ahead and buy the bus. Sure, it seems a little irresponsible to buy yet another vehicle that hardly runs. We are now five vehicle household. Thankfully, we don’t have a home owners' association, as I’m sure we would have gotten kicked out already.
The responsible part of me did question this purchase. But a bigger part of me couldn’t get past how awesome the idea of riding across the country with my husband in a Volkswagen bus sounds.
Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors, encourages his readers to look at their lives as a story and be mindful of the story they are creating. He said good stories start with inciting incident, something that catapults the plot into motion. Buying this bus, which I have named Taw-tiana, is our inciting incident for the summer of 2012. And I can’t wait to see where Taw-tiana leads me and Logan in our story.
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Comments
My friends and I had planned to cross the country last year and visit some friends at web design columbia sc along the way. Our plan was to hit the coast and drive through to Las Vegas and then into Mexico. Everything was set then we got a little nervous when we heard how dangerous Mexico had become. One day we will do it but probably just through the states. Good luck on your adventures!
This is a very relaxing and fun action.I used to participate myself at those kind of activities and once I was in berlin and it was very nice and interesting
Retirement could be peaceful if you do your financial planning right. Save enough money to enjoy traveling to different places. If you save enough then you won't have to worry about how much flights are going to cost, you could just relax and take your grandchildren to a visit to Magic Kingdom.
Retirement planning sounds scary but it could be real fun if you make all the financial arrangements right. You two have all the time in the world for each other and you could go on trips to anywhere you like. My grandparents love to roam around, they are just back from toronto and they are ready for another trip.